Elcari language

Posted by Gareth Wilson
on 18:33 9/5/02

In reply to: (none)

I just read your comments on the elcari language. It sounds fascinating,
how far have you got with it? I've been playing around with your
morphemes and I've guessed that _nebd_ means "miner" and _maku_ means
"theft", although I'm open to correction.

Mark responds:

Last I checked, the grammatical sketch had grown to about 17 pages.
It's decidedly weird, which was my intention for a non-human language.
There's still some important parts missing, though.

Your words are correct, though I'd adjust the glosses. Ebd
is an excavation of any kind; a mine would be a substyle. And mak
is specifically stealing property; it could also be translated 'invade'.
Stealing moveable objects is qilten.

Here's another nice word for you: gnqêtw 'father'.
The initial g- is a masculine prefix (feminine is ch-); the final -w is
an honorific, and the verb qêt is 'beget'.

If anyone's wondering what Gareth is referring to, by the way, it's
to this rant.